Newborn Monster
by Woodswolf
Summary: Meet Jaela. She's not the most emotional, or the most normal. After an incident, she finds herself in a strange school for others like her - but something is different. What will happen when she discovers a new, awful potential?
1. Prologue

**PROLOGUE**

* * *

"I finally found it," the person says, with a sly grin on their face.

"I've come up with so many new definitions on this trek," another voice cattily replies. "Here's one: Psychopath - A person crazy enough to do something along the lines of this."

"Then, cat," the girl grins, "Prepare to meet more of us."

She turns the key.

The cat disappears in a flash, as he was the guide, nothing more.

The journey itself is for the girl alone.

* * *

_(A/N): I decided to put this extremely long thing at the end here._

_There are only two things that are preventing this from being an original fiction:_

_1. The concept of beldams. You know, those button-eyed hags that try to eat your soul, invented by Mr. Gaiman and perfected by Mr. Selick? Yeah, those ones._

_2. The Beldam herself. Anywhere from two to five beldams will make an appearance in this story. I know that one of them is the Beldam, but I'm not sure which one it should be, as I have my own interesting plot twists planned for each scenario._

_Otherwise, everything else is mine._

_Now, now, before a lot of you say that I've ripped off _Monster High_, I didn't even know what that __**was**__ before I wrote this. I read it to a friend and they said, "Hey, that sounds a lot like... isn't there some sort of haunted high-school TV show or something?"_

_I looked it up. There was _Monster High_._

_So. In two simple sentences for all to understand: I own everything. Deal with it._


	2. One

**ONE**

* * *

"Let's forget formalities and move on, okay?"

The girl had a look of extreme confidence on her face; a lopsided grin, cocky and reckless.

Her name was Jaela. She was around fifteen years old and had been declared a psychopath.

The recklessness that naturally came with that diagnosis is what brought her here.

The monster before her did not look amused; it had a very fake smile plastered on its roughly-humanlike face, with teeth that were too white, too sharp, and too long to be human.

The most defining feature, of course, was not the teeth that were too sharp or the lips that were too red; instead, it was the creature's eyes, two shining black buttons, reflecting innocence to the highest degree, no matter how many lies they told.

"Aren't you going to ask why I'm here, beldam?" she asked the monster.

The plastic smile faded. "You said we'd... _forget_... formalities."

"Well, then," Jaela said. "I'm here because I'm curious about monsters - those that exist _and_ those that don't. I want to study you."

The beldam pursed its too-red lips before it put on another smile, this one more convincing.

"Oh, I'm afraid I'm too busy for your psychological study," it said, frowning slightly for effect. "You know the drill - souls to capture, worlds to create..."

"You have time for this," Jaela told it. "You don't even have to leave. I just want to watch your behavior for several months or years. How you work. What you do. Everything."

THe beldam was upset, to say the least. Its fake smile faded to a true frown and stayed that way.

"I've got the street address of a vampire if you want to go there first," it says. "I'll let you study me if you study him first..."

"I'm not that stupid," Jaela commented, her long, straight hair framing her face.

The button-eyed creature was not amused.

Then, suddenly, its face cleared, and was quickly replaced with a sense of morbid curiousity.

"You know," it whispered to itself, "I've never sent anyone there..."

"Sent anyone where?" Jaela asked, confused.

The monster smiled an evil smile. "Somewhere where I'll never have to deal with you again."

It scraped two fo its metallic fingers together, creating an ear-piercing sound much like nails on a chalkboard. The world around the two of them began to fall apart. As everything collapsed, it quickly faded to a white nothingness.

The floorboards beneath her feet caved in, and Jaela fell what might have been a mile.

As she fell, everything faded away until she was completely engulfed in whiteness.

Then there was nothing but the dark.

* * *

_Thirteen years of death and darkness_

_Before immortality takes its hold._

_Your world will stray from light and brightness_

_And then will enter new days of cold._

* * *

_(A/N): As you've probably noticed, this is about the same length as my regular chapters, weighing in at 468 words._

_The next chapter, and hopefully all those beyond it, will be in the 1000-2000 range. The next one is over 1700 words, and I know that many people out there have been wanting me to have long chapters for a long time. The next chapter took about 45 minutes for me to type up, and will be up shortly after this one is._


	3. Two

**TWO**

* * *

She began to regain consciousness gradually.

"New student? Well... don't have any... No, she just showed up... A shame, no?... She was unconscious... Yeah... So, I just ask for her name when she wakes up?"

Jaela regained her eyesight and found a tall, white-haired woman sitting at a desk in a small office. She was talking on a phone with someone, listening to what the other person was telling her, while doodling on a scrap of paper.

"Yeah," she answered whoever was on the other end of the line. She turned to face where Jaela was sitting and saw that she was awake.

"Oh! She's up now! Well, I think... It's so hard to tell... Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'll get her registered. Okay. Thanks, Devin."

The woman hung up the phone and smiled at Jaela. Her green eyes were piercing and had an undertone of ferocity.

Jaela nervously smiled back, not quite trusting the woman, especially after she saw the very realistic set of fangs in her mouth.

"Well, my name is Tala Shahaka, but you can just call me Tala. I was just on the phone with the principal, Mr. Admon. We were sorting out your registration."

Jaela looked around the small office. There were a few photographs on the walls; a few paintings were scattered here and there. A very large potted plant sat next to a five-drawer-tall filing cabinet it dwarfed, and a smaller pot of ivy sat on a ledge behind the desk, only restrained from falling onto it by a wire lattice. There was a single large window on the wall to the right of her, and six small, plastic snowglobes sat on the wide windowsill. The light from the window fell on carpet of an earthy brown color that covered the floor of the entire office.

The desk showed the opposite tendency of the rest of the room: papers and folders were strewn all over it. There was a penholder that was almost completely empty, as the writing utensils it contained vastly preferred to play hide-and-seek on and under the workstation.

Jaela realized that the only reason the rest of the room wasn't as disorganized as the desk was because, assuming this was a school, there were probably janitors.

"So, what's your name?" Tala asked her, breaking the silence that had most likely gone on for quite a while. The white-haired woman hat out a black pen, ready to scribble down anything.

"Jaela," she told her. "What is this place, anyway?"

"This is the School for Monsters and Magical Creatures," Tala said, without looking up from her paper. "J-A-E-L-A, right?" she asked, scribbling a few things down.

"Yeah. But why am I here, then? I'm not a 'magical creature'. I'm just a kid," Jaela asked, confused.

Tala looked up, lines of concern on her young face. Even though she had snow-white hair, she couldn't have been more than thirty.

"You mean..." she began, with her green eyes watching every movement, "...you don't know what happened to you?"

Jaela shrugged her shoulders, more curious than anything.

Tala sighed and looked at a clock on the wall Jaela hadn't noticed, tucked behind a few photographs of some (long-ago?) memories. "I have to go talk to Mr. Admon for a minute. Stay here, please."

Tala stood up. She was surprisingly tall, around six feet four inches, even without the two-inch high heels she wore. Her white hair fell to the middle of her back. She left the room, leaving Jaela alone in the small office.

Jaela stood up and walked around the room to stretch her legs (it felt like she hadn't moved in a while, and she thought it was strange), and eventually walked over to take a look at the snowglobe collection on the windowsill.

The snowglobes were the kind where you could open up the bottom and insert a picture into a slot to make your own 'personalized' snowglobe. There was one of Tala, another of someone of very close relation (Jaela decided it was probably a brother of hers), a third of a man with very dark hair and eyes, and a fourth that was of a very large group of people - the dark-haired man was again in this group, towards the back near Tala, although it was hard to tell it was him from the grainy photo quality.

The last two snowglobes weren't as cheap as the other ones were (they probably had plastic domes just like the others so that it would be less likely they would break); both were more traditional snowglobes with sculptures inside them.

The first one was of a fairy sitting on a flower, both of which were brightly-colored and cheery-looking. It seemed almost too happy to be sitting on the flower, smiling in a way that was teasing: _I'm still alive, loser_.

The second one was almost the exact opposite of the first: the sculpture inside was of a pure-white wolf in a completely colorless forest - everything in the sculpture was unpainted, only glazed to prevent it from being eroded away by the water mixture and the little plastic snowflakes (when they would fall on the sculpture, anyway). It was a beautiful scene, but it looked somehow unfinished.

Jaela didn't realize anyone else was in the room until she felt a firm, comforting hand on her shoulder.

"It's a tragic thing," the man behind her said. He had a deep, smooth voice, like honey.

Jaela turned around to find that this was the man pictured in some of the snowglobes. His eyes were a very dark crimson color, which she hadn't been able to tell from the grainy photographs inside the snowglobes.

"What's a tragic thing?" Jaela asked the man from the photographs.

"People like you," he told her, his eyes distant. "They make you in secret, while you're not at your senses, and then they dump you off here before you regain them. When you wake up, you have no idea what's changed, and we're the only people who can help you."

"What do you mean?" Jaela asked him.

He sighed, and stared down at the snowglobe she had been looking at, the one with the sculpted white wolf.

"Just like love, sometimes things just don't work out with our kind," he sighed. "My name is Devin Admon. I'm the principal here. Walk with me."

He went for the door, and Jaela followed him reluctantly. Tala had been waiting outside, and she glanced at them as they passed before going back into her office.

"I know you have questions," Mr. Admon told her. "Ask away."

Jaela had already come up with a lengthy list of questions, and picked out the most important ones.

"What is this place?"

"It's a school for newly born or newly created monsters," he told her, staring ahead blankly. "They learn how to be the next generation here."

Jaela was unfazed. "What kind of school? Part-time, or year-round?"

"Full time," he told her. "There's nowhere else to go for breaks."

They turned a corner into another hallway. A few people were in a group, chatting at the far end, but otherwise it was empty.

"When will I start, assuming I _can_ actually go to this school?"

"Two days from now. It's a Friday, the last day we had school this week. You'll start on Monday. You've got the weekend to get a feel of the place."

They passed the group of students. A few of them said hello to the principal, but most of them just stared at Jaela. Jaela sent a mocking smile in their direction, and they all shivered and looked away.

"Never seen a freak like _that_ before," one of them whispered.

"What would I learn here, anyway?" Jaela asked him once they were passed the group.

"All sorts of things," Mr. Admon told her, steering them down another hallway. "How to find a lair, various magical abilities, sustenance... et cetra... Anything else?"

"One thing," Jaela said. "Where are we going?"

Mr. Admon's face tightened. "To the only mirror in the school that can't break. We use it often for situations like yours."

They continued to walk down the empty hall.

"Had to use it on a female werewolf a few weeks ago," the principal admitted. "Zabi, I think her name was? Zobi? I can't remember. Too many students here. But she's in group therapy three times a week now."

Jaela wasn't concerned for, or interested in, the other person he was talking about. She decided, however, that if it came down to it, a werewolf could be a valuable ally.

Mr. Admon guided Jaela into a relatively large room. Pillows lay stacked in the corners. A piano sat in another corner, looking very dusty and abandoned. The ashes from a fire still smoldered slightly, as if whatever meeting had been held in here finished not long ago. One whole wall was a window, the only source of light besides the burnt-out fireplace. The daylight was fading quickly outside the window, ready to become night.

She suddenly realized that there were no chairs.

"This is the Therapy Room," Mr. Admon said. "Sometimes it's used for smaller magic workshops or club meetings, but usually just for the thrice-weekly therapy."

He sighed. "It's also where I first learned I was a vampire, and where thousands of others figured out what was 'wrong' with them, and why they ended up here..."

There was a brief, lingering silence.

"So, where's the mirror?" Jaela asked him, curious to see where he was going with the conversation.

"Look up."

Jaela looked up and found that the whole ceiling was a giant mirror, seamless and perfect.

She also saw that she now had round, innocent, dead black button eyes.

Jaela grinned at the ceiling, and it grinned back at her unblinkingly. She had a feeling what those kids in the hallway had seen, and could understand that the first word to describe it properly would be 'terrifying'.

She turned back to the principal, no emotion betraying what she was about to do.

"I have one thing to say," Jaela told him.

"What?" asked a very concerned Mr. Admon.

She walked up to him and put her lips close to his ear.

"Boo," she whispered.

Jaela left the room, leaving a very confused vampire behind her, staring at a stack of red and blue pillows with a very dumb look on his face.

* * *

_(A/N): Some of you probably happily jumped on some of the details I threw in there. Probably a lot of you._

_Well, at minimum, the romance lovers._

_I know what's most heartbreaking, and I know what I implied. They're the same thing._

_You'll learn the whole truth later. You might like, you might hate. I guarantee nothing._

_It'll probably be two or three chapters from now. Not sure. It all depends on how much I cover in each chapter. My guess is that it will be roughly the same length as this one, so probably three chapters._

_Also, some of you may have recognized my description of Tala. She's actually based off of Aisling from _The Secret of Kells_. It's an awesome movie; look it up. There's many similarities on purpose.  
_


	4. Three

**THREE**

* * *

"You don't even have a dorm assignment yet, and you storm out," Mr. Admon said to Jaela once he had caught up to her. "I _like_ you, kid."

_You're supposed to,_ Jaela thought. She grinned. "So, where's my dorm going to be, anyway?"

"We have to go back to the office. I don't know which ones have openings," he answered. "I think I know of one or two _possible_ spots, but I'm not sure if I remember right..."

They began to walk back to the office. The group of kids had cleared out of the hallway, and now it was completely silent.

"They're probably out playing Capture the Flag in the woods," Mr. Admon told her. "Almost every night they're out there, the students. Everybody is usually out there on Friday and Saturday nights, though. Sometimes even teachers," he chuckled.

"How do they divide up the teams for that, anyway?"

"Vampires versus werewolves, most of the time. Most of the other creatures just pick a side and it ends up even," he told her. "Violence is quite encouraged out there - no rules except to get the flag very quickly."

Jaela wondered what was going on in the woods currently. She decided it was one of two extremes: a very violent, bloody battle, where everyone charged into each other immediately, or a silent infiltration of either side, slowly navigating back routes before being hit by a violent ambush.

Eventually, they reached the office. They walked into the lobby area and finally into Tala's office. Tala looked up as they walked in.

"She's not unconscious... I take it things went well?"

"Quite," Mr. Admon told her. "If anything, she was _happier_ after she found out."

"_That's_ a rare case," Tala said, surprised. "Looking for a dorm, then? I think I found a suitable place - I could search for more, though."

"Who's in it?" Mr. Admon asked her.

"Werewolf - she's in therapy. Nice girl," Tala informed the other two people in the room.

"Oh..." the principal said, hiding his disappointment. "She wouldn't happen to be the one that... freaked out?"

Tala clicked her tongue. "Yes... Jaela probably won't mind, though... Right?"

Jaela shrugged her shoulders casually. She decided that she would probably end up better off if the 'experts' decided for her in foreign matters.

Tala tried to hide her grin.

"Then it's settled," she announced. "I'll take you to the dorms."

Jaela left the small office for the second time that day, and followed closely behind Tala as they walked down similar hallways. They walked through a pair of glass doors and out onto the grounds.

The lawn around the building was very clean-cut and well-manicured. Hedges lined the red brick building, sporting flowers of purples and blues. A concrete path cut through the lawn, branching about thirty yards ahead of Jaela. One end went to a rather large building made of the same red brick that the school was, only it was several stories taller and more square.

Aside from the sounds of crickets and other insects, it was completely silent outside.

All of a sudden, a loud battle cry and some howls interrupted the stillness, coming from the direction where the other path led: a tall, dense pine forest, about two hundred yards away from where they were standing outside the school. It was further behind the tall brick building along the path.

"Oh, that's from the Capture the Flag game," Tala told her, even though Jaela had been able to guess. "Sounds like somebody's gonna have to be on the mend for a little while after that kind of tussle..."

Tala began to walk toward the tall brick building, and Jaela quickly followed behind her.

As they walked the two hundred or so feet to the building, a few other noises came from the woods that seemed to be coming from the battle - most notably howls from wolf packs and what sounded like the screeches of a bat colony.

Tala seemed to be shivering a little for the last twenty feet and had grown paler, as if she were sick.

Jaela asked her what was wrong, a normal response designed to get Tala to trust her, but Tala simply answered that it was just a little too cold outside for her.

They walked inside the entrance way to the dorm building, and Tala immediately regained the color in her face.

"Werewolves shape-shift in the cold," Tala explained. "I'm supposed to remain professional, so I don't shift very often anymore.

"But the kids don't have any rules. Most of them, once classes are over, go straight out out the woods to divide up teams for Capture the Flag. The majority usually end up shifting around ten o'clock at night, and don't shift back until seven or eight in the morning, and hour or two before classes start."

Jaela was satisfied with the explanation - she had come to learn about beldams, and already knew a decent amount about werewolves and how to exploit their weaknesses.

Tala walked over to a button on a wall and pressed it, and a set of doors slid open.

Jaela realized it was an elevator and climbed in with Tala, who pressed a button labeled '7'. It lit up with a creamy orange light, and the doors slid shut.

Above the rest of the buttons, there was a larger one made of blue plastic labeled 'PENTHOUSE'.

"What's in the penthouse?" Jaela asked, surprised. She reached out to push the button, but Tala stopped her hand.

"I thought only the staff could see that button..." Tala said, a confused frown lining her face. "That's where the groundskeepers live, though."

"Why do the groundskeepers live in the penthouse?" Jaela pressed.

"They need a comfortable place to rest and regain their energy," Tala told her. "It takes a lot of effort to keep this whole place real."

Tala did not care to elaborate on that fact, and deflected all further questions.

The doors opened onto the seventh floor with a slight squeal, and Tala quickly walked out of the elevator into the hallway.

The hallway was simple; the white walls and ceiling were perfectly smooth, with the occasional light in its nook in the ceiling. The floor was a simple green carpet, similar to the carpeting in Tala's office.

Jaela walked with Tala for a while, and eventually they stopped at a door labeled '34'.

"Floor 7, room 34. The key..." Tala said, taking a large bronze key off of a ring and inserting it in the door's lock. She turned it counter-clockwise and the lock clicked open.

"Doesn't look like she's in to show you around," Tala commented, motioning to the empty, dark room. She flicked a switch and a shaded lightbulb in the middle of the ceiling zapped to life.

"You can find anything you might need in that closet over there," she instructed, motioning to a door. "It's infinite. Enchanted."

Jaela thanked Tala, who left shortly afterward, handing Jaela the key and journeying back to the school.

She set the bronze key on her bed and began to dig around in the closet Tala had shown her.

"So, you're my new roommate, then?"

The question came completely out of nowhere, and it startled Jaela. She turned to find the person attached to the voice.

"Sorry," the girl said, flashing an apologetic smile. She, just like Tala, had a set of small fangs in her mouth. The girl had pretty, yellow-green eyes and hair the color of mahogany.

"I'm just not very used to people with loud footsteps coming on this floor - me and Principal Admon don't get along very well, you see," the girl explained. "I'm Zevi," she shrugged.

"Jaela," she replied, wondering what secrets this girl was hiding, and how she could use them eventually.

"So, what're you?" Zevi asked her. "I haven't seen anyone that looks like you around here..." she said, tapping near her left eye. "I'm a werewolf."

"Beldam," Jaela said automatically.

"I think I've heard that somewhere around the school before..." Zevi commented, intrigued. "I can't remember where I heard it, though... something about the groundskeepers, maybe?"

"I don't know," Jaela absently answered. "But if you don't mind, I'm going to change for -"

"You don't need to sleep."

There was a momentary silence.

"Huh?" Jaela asked.

"You don't need to sleep. You're a monster, remember? Stay up all night scaring little kids? You don't need to sleep," Zevi repeated.

There was another brief silence.

"Okay," Jaela agreed, "but something's telling me I should."

"It's fine," Zevi told her, flopping down on her own mattress.

Jaela changed into a set of pyjamas and sat on the edge of her bed. Zevi got up and flipped the lightswitch off.

"You know, I still sleep, too."

Jaela smiled slightly.

"G'night, Jaela."

"G'night, Zevi."

The darkness was pure and silent. With it quickly came a dreamless sleep.

* * *

_(A/N): As you can probably tell, Jaela is a manipulator at heart. As I've stated before, she's a psychopath, and that's one of the symptoms. There is a long list of them, and Jaela probably qualifies for about three-quarters of them._

_In this chapter, I added a lot of foreshadowing for events to come in the next few chapters, filled people in on werewolves, added a cute moment at the end, and it's _long_. I think I've satisfied _every_ party with this chapter._

_Also? Just thought some people might be interested. I got all of the names off of . Each one of them I picked for its meaning. So, thus, if you're looking for more information about the characters (Tala's full name is relevant - Tala Shahaka, remember? Search them separately), go ahead and try that.  
_


	5. Four

**FOUR**

* * *

Jaela awoke to see sunlight streaming through a window she hadn't noticed the night before. In fact, she didn't think it had been there in the first place.

She got out of bed and looked around to find that Zevi was still asleep. Jaela dug around in the closet and eventually found a dark blue T-shirt and a pair of jeans that looked like they would fit her.

She changed, and saw that Zevi still wasn't up. She decided to have a look around herself.

Jaela grabbed her key from the table where she had placed it the night before and left the room.

Out in the hall, it was almost completely dark; the only light came from the creamy-yellow glowing 'ELEVATOR' sign at the end of the hall.

Jaela walked down towards the light. When she was closer, she began to see the shining red light of an exit sign.

The door behind it led to an even darker room, and Jaela fumbled around for the walls before tripping on a step and almost falling over.

Jaela got down on her hands and knees and slowly crawled up the stairs, not wanting to trip on a step and fall down half a flight of stairs in the complete darkness. Eventually, she hit a wall and turned, using her hands to guide her up the next flight.

After crawling up the last set of stairs, she ran into a door and stood up. It was unlocked, so she opened it, hoping that the eighth floor's lights were on.

Nothing was behind the door.

A blank white emptiness, infinite and otherworldly, lay behind the door. It was not affected by the darkness of the stairway, or by her presence; the nothingness was what it was, a great white expanse, devoid of life and movement.

A fragment of a memory pulled at her mind, urging her to turn back, but she ignored it.

Jaela looked back at the door anyway, where she had come from.

Written on it was an impossible message: "PENTHOUSE LEVEL'.

_What were you expecting, child?_

The whisper came from thin air; Jaela wasn't sure whether she was imagining it.

_Some sort of fancy room, complete with gilded sculptures and luxurious furniture? We only show that to people who can't imagine anything else. This saves energy._

_Anyways, if we're going to train you, we have to start weaning you off of reality. It takes a lot of effort to create for yourself, but it's far more worth it in the long run._

_We only let a few people see the stairway and elevator button to our floor, and you are one of the privileged few. Remember that._

_We think you should get going - your friend is awake downstairs and she's starting to wonder where you've wandered off to._

_Run along, now._

"Your wish is my command," Jaela said sarcastically, preparing to walk blindly down the stairs again. She shut the door of the empty room and made her way down a flight of stairs to the seventh floor.

She opened the door to the hall to fumble around in the darkness to get back to her room. Jaela unlocked the door with her key and walked inside to find Zevi sitting on the shag carpet that covered the floor.

"Didn't know you were a sleepwalker," she teased.

"I'm not," Jaela defended herself. "I got up earlier than you, because light was streaming through a -"

She suddenly realized there was no window in the room.

"Well, whatever," Zevi brushed it off. "We can hang around here until seven, when they open the school to let us in for breakfast."

Zevi returned to reading a very thick book on the floor, which Jaela assumed was some sort of textbook.

She flopped down on her bed and barely heard the sound of crumpling paper. Jaela sat up and found a note sitting on her bed, folded in half with her name on it.

She unfolded it, and whispery voices that were not quite there read its contents to her.

_The window was there. The hall lights were off. There was a nonexistent stairway that connected two floors that weren't adjacent. Most importantly, the penthouse doesn't exist when it doesn't have to._

_Consider this your first lesson with us: nothing _has_ to be possible to occur. This world doesn't have to listen to what reality says._

_We want to also alert you that you will not be having a lesson with us until next Monday. Two of us have important business to take care of outside the School, and the remaining one will be too tired doing all three of our jobs for a week._

_Next Monday at midnight, take the stairs up to the penthouse._

_We'll be waiting._

* * *

The next half hour passed without incident. Eventually the time came around for the school's breakfast line to open, and Jaela and Zevi began to walk over to the school to eat. As they walked, they saw several people carrying someone else out of the trees in the background.

The moans of pain coming from the person reached Jaela's ears. She assumed it was from the battle Tala had pointed out to her last night, and thought no further on the matter; Zevi seemed just as eager to ignore the screams.

Jaela followed Zevi inside, who turned and walked through a set of double doors into a very large gymnasium.

"Apparently this used to be a regular school," Zevi told her while they walked to a table. "It's on an island in... Lake Superior, I think? Hudson Bay? I can't remember. But anyway, the founder bought the whole island and set up the school here, but since it's the only school for monsters in the world, they had to add a second floor to the gym and turn it into a cafeteria, and the original one is used for extra seating, and then there's some tables behind the school, too. So that's why we're gonna eat in the gym, if you were wondering."

_That doesn't explain the penthouse, _Jaela thought. But she just nodded casually for Zevi and sat down with her.

Jaela looked around and saw the room packed with hundreds of people, and that was on the first floor of the gym alone. She spotted no fewer than four lunch lines curling around the room like snakes, gradually shrinking. The walls were a plain white color, one that hid no detail of the people that it was a backdrop to.

Eventually, all of the lines shrank down to around thirty people each, but people like them that also decided to wait to eat were lining up quickly.

"Want to get in line?" Zevi asked her, glancing at the lines around the room. "I don't exactly want to end up waiting over there for a long time."

"Go on ahead," Jaela told her. "I'm not hungry."

"How can you _not_ be?" Zevi teased, before running to one of the lines.

Half an hour later, she walked back to where Jaela was sitting with a small trya. It only held a small carton of milk, a bowl of dry cereal, and a large orange.

"Want some?" Zevi asked, sitting down and taking the orange off her tray. She began to peel it, her dark fingers working methodically to separate the peel from the orange flesh. "It'll be another half hour wait if you got in line now, trust me."

"I'm not hungry," Jaela insisted.

Zevi looked up at her. "I don't get it," she said. "_I'm_ hungry. Why aren't you?"

"I don't know," Jaela told her. "It's just something weird."

"This whole place is weird," Zevi laughed.

_How right you are,_ Jaela thought.

"But don't come crying to me when you're starving at eleven o'clock."

The girls both laughed.

* * *

_(A/N): Okay, so, here's a few things._

_**First thing: **__In my last A/N, I forgot to mention: Tala at one point mentions that werewolves shapeshift in the cold. I like this detail more than the full moon traditional werewolf lore (it also fit better with my plot, as I still wanted to let Zevi have a reason to be depressed, needed the transformations to happen more often than every full moon, and_ _did not want to draw on __**Twilight**__'s shift-on-command thing). That idea came from the __**Wolves of Mercy Falls **__trilogy, of which I have read the whole thing and loved._

_**Second thing: **__I know exactly where I'm going with this now. I have decided that this is officially a __**(SPOILER!) **__Beldam backstory. Can you guess who it is, then? I'll add a character to the info page at the end for the epilogue; you can probably guess who, again. __**(END SPOILER!)**_

_**Third thing: **__I have the events of the next several chapters planned out already, including the event depicted on the story cover, and the greetings-and-meetings of the other two characters in the main four._

_**Fourth thing: **__On the chapter after this one, the rating will be moved to T, and it will probably stay at that rating for the rest of the story. The reason? In that chapter, there are going to be a few swear words, and, several chapters after that, several mentions of sex (among two side characters, one of which is only used for the moment and never seen again - actually, that last criteria applies to both of them). Moral of the story, the rating will __**NOT**__ move to M, I can guarantee. If it DOES move to M, it will be for extreme violence and/or gore, and I'm not good enough at choreographing complex battle scenes to make it move up there._

_**Fifth thing: **__with only five chapters, this is now my fourth-longest story, behind my **Coralied** series and my epically-long crossover, **The Pamphlet**. And all of those have, for every 1000 words, at least one-and-a-fraction chapters. I will not be surprised if on the sixth or seventh chapter that it finally overtakes the second- and third-longest stories to become the second-longest._

_(That last one was just something I was proud of)_

_Anyway. I'll probably have the next chapter up later tonight; I have everything planned for five or six chapters now, and it will be easy to write (I was having a severe case of writers block on how to end this one)._

_Also, I don't know if you're out there, anyone, but would you bother dropping me a few cents? I don't care if it's one cent or three cents or a hundred dollars; I just want your two cents._

_Heh. Did you get my lame joke?_


	6. Five

**FIVE**

* * *

It had been a long day of walking and talking. Zevi showed Jaela around the school, and Jaela, as promised, did not complain to Zevi about the fact that she hadn't eaten in who-knew-how-long.

The girls were walking back to the dorms to sleep when Jaela suddenly thought of something she wanted to try.

"Hey, Zevi?" Jaela asked. "Have you played Capture the Flag yet?"

"No," Zevi told her, shivering. "And I don't want to try, either. Somebody out there'll snap my neck!"

"Come on," Jaela encouraged. "You just run around near the edge of the woods until seven AM. How hard can that be?"

After several minutes of arguing, Zevi eventually conceded to her demands, and they took the right path at the fork, the one that led to the woods.

Jaela then half-listened while Zevi told her a million and one reasons why it was a very bad idea to play the game.

Instead, she thought about all the strange things that had happened in her first twenty-four hours or so at the school - the disappearing window, the note on her bed, and the impossible staircase. None of it made sense; she was hoping that the Capture the Flag game would help clear her head and let her think about it from a more revealing perspective.

"Yeah, so, I was thinking - what if we put the Flag on top of the Lookout? When we tried the Pit last week, they flooded us. A massacre."

"We tried that on Wednesday. They saw it easy and we lost in half an hour, but people kept killin' each other 'cuz we couldn't find 'em - oh, stragglers."

Jaela stepped into the large clearing first, earning whispers of recognition and many a scrutinizing glance. Zevi stepped into the space behind her.

The clearing was very large, and it looked like it had enough space to fit eight hundred people comfortably. The light in it was fading fast, the sun quickly retiring for the night. About four hundred people stood in the clearing, watching and listening to five people bicker while they were standing on a pile of logs. Jaela assumed they were the leaders.

"Five forty-nine, total," one announced. "Still a really small Saturday."

"Yeah, because everybody got murdered in Wednesday's battle! And it was all our good fighters!" another shouted.

"Let Dylan take care of 'em," the first person sighed. "He'll probably know where to put 'em."

Something stirred in the trees across from Jaela, and every person in the clearing watched as a boy wearing a black trenchcoat walked in. He was a few years older than Jaela, with reddish-brown hair and light purplish-blue eyes.

"I _said_ to put everybody else that comes on attack," he spat, expressing his resentment for the people on the makeshift stand. "We've already got our defense prepped and our backup troops hidden, and the ambush party is already at the top of the Lookout. I'm the Strategist, Captain. Don't waste my time reassigning everyone."

The person who had previously spoken sighed, and Jaela assumed he was the team captain. "Do these two _seriously_ look like _attack_ material to you, Dylan?"

Jaela found herself not liking the leader very much. She stared at him but kept her resentment hidden under an unreadable expression.

Dylan snorted and Jaela thought for a moment that she saw a bulge move beneath the trenchcoat. "The beldam does," he answered.

Jaela shifted her blank gaze to him, although this time the mask hid curiosity. He laughed.

"See, that's creepy enough to make a vampire wet their pants and go screaming for Mommy. She'll be fine," he assured. "What's your name, anyway?" he asked her.

She grinned. "Jaela."

"I like you then, Jaela. You two get ready - we begin the fight at sundown."

"The flag?" one of the leaders asked.

"Is hidden. Somewhere they'll never find it. Defense, come with me."

* * *

All the light that came in the forest only shone through in the occasional clearing.

Deep in the woods, however, barely any of the pale moonlight made the full descent, and what little did had lost intensity working its way through the dense trees, as well as any cloud cover that might have been above.

Jaela heard a bush shake and knew Zevi was stuck on something. She turned around to look at her.

Zevi was completely entangled in a bush about ten feet behind her, shivering violently. It looked like she had almost walked into the prickly bush to try to keep warm. Her yellow-green eyes were strangely reflective in the low light.

"T-t-too c-cold for me," she whispered before crying out; whether it was in pain or frustration, Jaela couldn't tell.

Zevi fell face-first into the bush, and her now decidedly agonized screams slowly became lower-pitched and more animal-like. About thirty seconds later, a four-foot tall dark beast walked out of the bush, looking back at Jaela with Zevi's eyes.

They were sad eyes, and they said only one thing:

_This is what I am, and I hate it._

The wolf howled a long, slow, mournful howl, and darted off into the forest.

Three more howls broke the stillness of the forest's night, and then all was quiet once again.

* * *

Jaela continued silently walking through the woods. Who knew where Zevi was now, but Jaela didn't really care. The werewolf could have been chatting with a small pack on the other side of the forest, wherever _that_ was.

"Bastard!" someone said quietly.

The speaker was close by. Jaela froze.

"Oh, no, _I_ don't need a _map!_" they continued, the mockery in their tone obvious. The voice sounded vaguely female, but it was hard to tell through the parody it was doing. "I'll just follow the fucking _moon_ and we'll get there in _no time!_"

"_I_ flew up to see where their camp was, not _you!_" another voice, this time male, argued. "Not my fault you can't go bat worth _shit, _Vanessa!"

"Fuck. Off. James," the girl, whose name was apparently Vanessa, answered. "We can't even _see_ the fucking moon anyway!"

"Shut up!" a third voice shouted, another male. "Someone's gonna hear us over here and it's gonna be both of your faults!"

While the three people were arguing, Jaela began to slowly sneak over behind a tree so that she could hide from them; the odds that she would win a three-on-one fight with no weapon were against her, especially if they were all good fighters.

Then a twig snapped beneath her feet, and they heard her. Jaela froze.

"Shh! What was that?" the third voice whispered.

Jaela remained frozen and expressionless, carefully watching the group that was less than ten feet away.

Then someone caught her gaze, and she used that to her advantage. She slowly grinned, and watched their expression change from anxiety to sheer horror.

"HOLY _SHIT! _WHAT THE FUCK IS _THAT?_"they screamed.

Jaela jumped into action, running underneath and snapping off a thin branch to use as a weapon. She looked at her two remaining opponents, who raised their fists pitifully; the third had run away into the woods, back the way the group had come.

Jaela grinned and gripped the stick as she tried to whack the guy closest to her. He dissolved into a cloud of dark shapes much like flying rats, and the end of the branch passed through the area that had formerly been his head. He slowly melted back into one piece, but she had already begun attacking his partner to achieve the same result.

She ran through the nearby trees, trying to get hits in from behind them, but to no avail; her opponents kept dissolving into clouds of small, dark, furry things, and it suddenly occurred to her that the creatures were bats.

So she came up with another plan, and carried it through. Her attackers got in many hits, however, and she quickly collapsed.

"She was one tough bitch," one said.

"Not that hard. But which way now?" their friend answered.

"I don't know. You sure she's out, though?"

At that moment, Jaela attacked. She hit one of her assailants on his left temple, and he fell unconscious; the other transformed into a cloud of bats that quickly flew away.

She stood up quickly, and ran from the clearing, regaining her course and fleeing the scene.

* * *

Jaela ran, and her run slowly became a jog, and her jog slowly became a walk, which eventually slowed to a complete stop.

She rested for a while before deciding to continue on.

Seconds turned to minutes, and the minutes stacked up to hours; she continued her silent walk, almost asleep on her feet.

And then she heard a voice.

"Not very many people reach the edge of this forest, let alone this world."

Jaela was surprised by the voice. It sounded very familiar in far-too-many ways.

She looked up to see a skeletal figure, like a six-legged corpse, staring out into a nearby expanse of nothingness. It was exactly the same nothing as she had seen before in the penthouse.

"I suppose you want an explanation before you start your training with us?" the creature asked, sighing.

Jaela nodded, and the creature turned, finally revealing its face.

In place of eyes, the creature had two large black buttons, partially hidden by round spectacles that were probably only there for effect. Its hair was long, chestnut-brown and greasy, and its lips were shaped into a fine, concerned line. Black cracks ran through a porcelain face, making it look old and scarred.

"I am one of the Groundskeepers. We are all beldams, just like you are, and we keep this place real. You can call me Raevyn."

Raevyn turned her head back to the nothingness beyond them. They both watched it do nothing for a while, standing in silence.

"Your friend, Zevi..." Raevyn finally said, frowning. "She is only one of thousands that we have to protect from the truth. This place... is not what people expect it to be, a real place. It's all fluid, all changing. It doesn't have to be constant... and it doesn't have to exist at all."

Jaela looked from the nothingness to Raevyn and back again.

"Don't tell anyone about this conversation, okay?"

Jaela nodded.

"Good," Raevyn grinned. "The enemy flag, if you're looking for it, is half a mile that way," she pointed with a bony hand.

Raevyn then pulled a silvery dagger out of thin air and handed it to her.

"This could be of use to you," she said distantly. "Don't get lost, now."

Jaela began to walk in the direction Raevyn had pointed, and still felt the beldam's accusing stare long after she was out of sight.

* * *

There were eight guards in the clearing with the flag. Jaela recognized a few of them from walking around the school earlier in the day, but most of them were new to her.

No doubt there were a few hundred more in the woods around it, based on what she had seen of her own team's defense earlier, but the path Raevyn had shown her was completely clear; no doubt was in Jaela's conviction that they hadn't expected an attack from behind. The guards were very close to each other on the same side of the clearing, watching the opposite direction from which she would strike.

She stepped into the clearing. The guards, apparently not hearing her, didn't move.

Then again. And again.

Now all she had to do was wrench the flag out of its position where it was staked in the ground.

Her hand squeaked on the metal pole when she tried to pull it out. The guards heard her.

Jaela immediately withdrew the silver blade she had been given and watched as they charged her. She stabbed the closest one in the arm, and they withdrew in pain, covering the wound.

She ducked and the next three that came at her were slashed in their legs, and one of them was unlucky enough to be cut through the bone. Blood gushed all over the clearing as the victims cried out loudly.

One of the last four ran off, screaming something along the lines of "Siege! We're under siege!" while the other three charged Jaela and dodged her slashes, looking for an opening in her defense to throw a punch or hit her with a stick.

She dispatched the first two quickly and easily, but the third eventually pinned her to the ground a few feet from the flag.

"Loser," the boy whispered, grinning.

"Wipe that smile off your face," Jaela grinned.

"Why?" he mockingly grinned.

"You're still smiling."

With her free hand, Jaela pulled the flag's pole from the ground before the boy realized what she was doing.

Dawn broke on the horizon. The game was won.

_(A/N): This chapter was really fun to write. All of the events depicted in it take place over a timeframe of a few hours from dusk to dawn on a Saturday night, the same night also falling in line with Jaela's first full day at the school._

_Now, I have a few credits to make._

_First thing: As you can probably tell, if you're as big a fan as I am, I've stolen a lot of the Capture the Flag stuff from the __**Percy Jackson and the Olympians universe **__(I don't want to have to explain the whole thing, but it also overlaps with __**The Kane Chronicles series **__and __**The Lost Hero series **__by the same author (Rick Riordan); that is a conversation for another day, however). I have a few reasons for that, specifically that they can't have a sporting league if it's the only school for monsters on Earth (er... whatever?...), and that I wanted to make it a game that would be easy for the Groundskeepers to contain, for the reason of the explanation that Raevyn gave Jaela. Zevi, for example, is freaking out over the fact she's a werewolf; if she found out she was actually in another dimension __**(THE TWILIGHT ZONE)**__, a dimension specifically used for trapping children and eating them alive (well, _that's_ another thing...)?... _Yeah.

_Second thing: Near the end, with Jaela's last two lines of dialogue? I stole those from the amazingly awesome anime (with Added Alliterative Appeal) Spirited Away. They're said by my favorite character in there, who is epically awesome. They're said right before he actually _eats two people alive. _**Have fun sleeping!**_

_Third thing: Rating has moved to T. Obvious, no?_

_Fourth thing: This is now my second-longest story! Yay!  
_

_I think that's it. Go wild, people.  
_


	7. Six

**SIX**

* * *

Even though Jaela had been walking all night to get the flag, it was less than a thirty-minute walk back to the school. She understood, though, why it happened - Raevyn herself had pointed out that everything was fluid and changing all the time here - and enjoyed knowing that fact.

She waited on the grass in front of the school for Zevi to straggle out of the woods.

Eventually, she did. Her clothes were soaked with blood; her face was distressed and covered with what looked like claw marks.

"There's a warehouse in the woods with an infinite closet," Zevi told her, explaining the relatively-new clothes. "But I am _never _playing again."

Jaela laughed.

"I'm going to get my schedule and look around the school instead of sitting at breakfast, if you don't mind," Jaela said. "You know by now that I don't need to eat."

"And I know that _that_ is _extremely_ normal," Zevi replied sarcastically. They both laughed. "But go ahead, yeah."

They entered the school, and while Zevi turned down the hallway to go to the gym, Jaela turned the opposite direction and began to walk to the office.

She walked down halls that were growing more and more familiar with the passage of time. Jaela walked into the office's lobby and then into Tala's small room.

Tala looked up as she walked in. "Need a schedule?" she automatically asked.

"You guessed correctly," Jaela grinned. "Zevi transformed last night."

The white-haired woman's smile faded. "She was playing?"

"Yeah," Jaela told her.

"Poor girl," Tala said absently. She looked lost in thought. "Here's your schedule, though - room number, class name, class time," she indicated, tapping a pen on each of three columns on a sheet of paper.

Tala gave the sheet to jaela and resumed what she had been working on, although more distracted than she had been before. Jaela let herself out of the room.

She left the office, checked her schedule, and set to work finding the rooms.

* * *

Jaela was running. She was running quickly, as fast as she could, from some hooligans on the other team that had probably been following her for upwards of an hour.

The silver blade she had recieved from Raevyn the night before had fallen out of her pocket when she first had started running. Now she had no way to defend herself against them.

Zevi was not out in the woods that night, playing the game. Jaela hadn't made her, and she didn't want to.

But she would have wanted the help, as she needed it now. She was tiring quickly.

The stalkers were catching up to her, chasing her rabidly. Eventually, all hopes of escape were lost to the wind and darkness in the forest.

"What should we do with her?" one of them asked.

"Throw her in the river," another answered. "That'll get rid of her for the rest of the game... at minimum."

They chuckled to themselves before they grabbed her and trekked towards the relatively far-off sound of running water.

Eventually the group - Jaela and her captors - made it to a large river that Jaela hadn't known was in the forest before now. The trees had opened up considerably, letting much more light into the woods.

They stopped on the bank and counted off slowly, before throwing her into the middle of the river as hard as they could.

Before she hit the water, Jaela knew all was lost.

Everything was a swirl of light and darkness for a moment; a single moment before all was dark.

* * *

_(A/N): Well, I decided to waste a page or two in my notebook and can an A/N on paper. I'm counting down the pages remaining until I'm done with this notebook I've only had for about a month. The current count? 49._

_Also, we've passed 10,000 words on the seventh chapter (according to of course; it's truly six chapters and a prologue). Yay! We're well on our way to my goal!  
_

_**So, here to canned A/N!**_

_This chapter was shorter. I know that. I was minimally inspired for Sunday (in story-time (I'm _so_ creative), not real time), as several things had been moved around because a few events on the super-packed Monday wouldn't make sense withous Sunday, etc. etc. etc., blah blah blah, blah blah, etc. etc..._

_Sorry if I bored anyone to death. Don't worry - you don't yet know a few characters by name, but being bored to death is better than what they're getting._

_Yes, _getting_. Although the punishment Saturday's (once again, in story-time) flag protectors got was harsh, yes, around twenty characters are getting worse than that._

_Have I bored anyone to death with the A/N, even? Gah, I need to start writing the next chapter._

_In it, we'll meet the last two of the Starring Four (Jaela, Zevi and two others we'll get to know more in-depth later (one of which was a minor character you've already met, assuming you haven't been skipping chapters)), go to class (a bit boring), and, depending on where I cut off, see more interesting stuff with Jaela (hehehe...), and learn more about Tala and Devin (Mr. Admon, you know?) and their extremely complex, extremely depressing relationship status._

_Anybody die? No? Good._


	8. Seven

**SEVEN**

* * *

She felt a bony hand pull her from the water, and quickly regained her sight. No one was there, but that wasn't the weirdest thing Jaela had seen at the school.

Jaela wondered what time it was, and looked to the sky. The clouds were a purplish red on one edge, from which Jaela assumed that it was sometime around dawn and that the brighter edges faced east or a direction near east.

She stood up and began walking forward, away from the river, hoping that she had ended up somewhere near the school.

Eventually, she did wander out into the gigantic clearing. Her clothes had dried significantly, and she felt raw flesh and something like mud on her face. She wiped the gunk from her face on her shirt and walked towards the school.

She walked inside the building, down the maze of hallways, and into a large lecture hall. She picked a seat and waited for her first class.

* * *

Ten minutes before her class was supposed to start (she found her schedule in a pocket - it was waterlogged and the ink had run everywhere, but it was still barely readable) people began slowly trickling into the room. A few looked at her as they walked in, but those were only the early birds, after which point there were too many people moving and talking in the room for anyone to pay attention to anybody.

Jaela began tracing shapes on the back of her left hand: circles and spirals, a whole tapestry of them, dots and lines invisible to any and all eyes. She became so engrossed in her work that she didn't realize when someone sat down next to her, watching her doodle with her finger.

"Bored?" the voice asked.

Jaela looked up to see someone she recognized from the Capture the Flag game two nights before.

"Dylan?"

"That's me," he laughed casually. "I didn't see you at all yesterday. Wanted to congratulate you on Saturday's Capture the Flag win."

"You heard about that?" she grinned.

"Not hard to when six people walk out of the woods with serious injuries and one with a concussion."

Jaela laughed quietly.

"What happened last night, though?" Dylan asked, his smile fading. "You look like you had a hard time out there," he said, wiping some of the mud substance off her face with his finger.

"Ambushed," she explained. "Some guys threw me in a river. And I thought I cleaned all of the mud up..."

"What?" he asked. "They threw you in the _river? _How did you get _out? _The current's around eight miles per hour!"

"There was a tree that had fallen in," she lied. She figured that it wasn't a wise idea to tell anyone the truth about that event. "I grabbed its trunk and climbed out."

"You're lucky, then," he told her. "The teachers don't go out looking for people to save. It's run by the students, and sometimes they leave each other to die."

Jaela grinned slightly.

"I'll have to remember that."

He smiled at her, and they waited in silence for a few minutes.

"I hate this," Dylan said finally. "You know?"

"What do you mean?" she asked him.

"Being here. What it means. All of it."

She grinned fully. "I think it's invigorating."

He sighed. "You don't have my problems, then. I'm struggling with my humanity."

"How?"

He frowned and sighed, and examined the back of her hand. "I'm a kraken. This is all an illusion. I'm a gigantic sea monster that eats ships for breakfast, and I'm struggling with holding onto this last piece of myself."

"How'd you become one?"

"Fell out of a boat while on a fishing trip and drowned. Woke up here," he explained.

She smiled. "Seems like everyone falls unconscious, then."

"It's not funny."

Jaela smirked. "The way you say it, it is."

Dylan snorted. "I like your sarcasm."

* * *

Her first class of the day, Basic Magic, passed by easily. According to the teacher in the front of the room, since every student arrives at a different time, the classes were enchanted so that anyone could begin the course at the beginning at any time, and would see just what they had to learn. Apparently the teacher (or whatever it was) had office hours after class for help, but Jaela figured she wouldn't need them.

The day rolled on. Basic Magic rolled on, eventually morphing into another class. Everything seemed slow, enough to let forever pass in a heartbeat - or the equivalent of one.

Eventually there was a break in the daytime activities for lunch. Jaela and Zevi walked to the gym to find a table. They sat down once they found one near the door and waited for a little while. Eventually Dylan walked up to their table.

"Can I sit here?" he asked, sitting down before either of the girls could answer.

"Well, you are," Zevi laughed.

Jaela laughed as well. "Oh, but my imaginary friend Bob was going to sit there."

"Funny," Dylan said.

"Let's see what we've got. Okay: the fish kid that won't swim, the werewolf with depression, and _you_. The new kid with the fucked-up face."

Jaela turned around to face the voice. It was a boy several inches taller than her with white-blonde hair and deep crimson eyes. The smirk he wore was teasing and twisted. He was flanked by two other kids of similar height and breadth. They seemed to be the school bullies from their looks.

"Go away, Blake," Dylan groaned. "Go be an asshole to someone else, how about?"

"Nuh-uh, fish face," Blake grinned. "I'm showing the new kid her place."

"Sure, sure, then," Dylan told him. "Why don't you show her your place? You know, the corner of your ass something crawled up and died in?"

"I'm the one that makes the rules, fish kid," he growled. "Not you or your therapy-magnets."

"Blake, why do you have to be such a bitch to everyone?"

The new voice came from a few feet behind them, and Jaela turned to look at him.

"Blaise, I said I was going to make the introductions," Blake told the voice, who was still out of view.

He walked into sight finally, and Jaela got a good look at him.

The most noticeable thing about him at that moment were his fangs, pure white, sharp, and backlit, as if by a flame in his throat. His hair was a dark charcoal grey, and his eyes were a deep, fiery amber. His skin was tan, but not quite the same reddish color as Dylan's.

"Well, Blake, I'm afraid that no one really cares what you think, as you're just a genuine asshole. How about that?" Blaise asked, grinning deviously.

"Fuck you," Blake said.

Blaise raised his hand and summoned a small fireball, which he tossed in his hand like a baseball.

Blake immediately gave up the argument. "Fine. Have fun with your 'friends', loser."

He walked away, and the fireball was extinguished. Blaise then sat down.

"Sorry about that. I have no idea why I'm friends with that asshole."

"You're a dragon, aren't you?" Zevi asked, clearly curious. Her brown hair fell around her face. "Skilled with elemental spells?"

"Fire, mainly," he replied. "Not very good, otherwise."

"Huh," she smiled.

Dylan spoke. "Well, thanks for getting him away. He wouldn't stop pestering us, otherwise."

Blaise laughed. "Nothing like a fireball to make his ass clear the room."

Jaela laughed with the rest of the group. Two new allies in a single day was quite an accomplishment.

* * *

The next class after the lunch period was over in what seemed like an instant, and then it was time for the final class of the day. For Jaela, it was Blood Magic.

She walked into the room where the class was to be held, picked up a paper on the desk at the front, and picked a seat to sit in. Blaise and Zevi were also in this class, and they sat next to her, one on each side.

The magical 'teacher' hologram stood up front and asked all of the students to listen to the lecture before diving into the project of the day. Jaela was happy to oblige, as she didn't know what to do in the first place.

The lecture was a basic overview of blood magic: what it is, what it can do, and how 'few people are successful in this fine discipline, so it's okay if you fail'.

"Blood magic is the process of using blood of yourself or another to create the most powerful spells possible," the 'teacher' said. "It can be used to create potions of all strengths and all types, as well as various helpful spells."

"One of the most important types of magic you can create is to create life - reanimating the dead, for example. It can also be used to create immortality potions so that one can survive when victims become scarce."

The hologram mentioned a few more things before it let everyone sit back and start their projects. Jaela looked at the paper in front of her and assembled the materials needed for the assignment. Today, they were trying to resurrect dead cockroaches using a 'basic' re-animation potion.

_1. Assemble required ingredients:_

_one Dead Man's Finger, minced_

_one-quarter ounce Powdered Wolfsbane_

_one cup Water_

She had everything she needed (it had been passed around beforehand - the ingredients, as well as pots, Bunsen burners, and small pocketknives), and began with the second step.

_2. Mix ingredients in small pot; boil, stirring occasionally._

_3. Remove from heat. Use knife to draw blood on underside of wrist; add three drops to pot. Stir._

Jaela poured the ingredients together with the water in the pot and stirred it a few times before setting it on the burner to heat. Meanwhile, she prepared the rest of what she needed and read through the final instructions.

_4. Apply heat for one minute. Pour over corpse._

The pot finally managed to boil, and she set it down on the counter before taking the knife and pressing it into her skin slightly.

Her skin broke, and for a moment, something glinted within the cut, like metal, before a tarry black substance began pooling around the wound.

Blood.

Jaela didn't blink an eye, but walked up to the teacher's office door to knock.

The woman that opened it stared quizzically at her for a moment, looking like she was going to say something about the fact that 'class isn't over yet', but Jaela quickly held out her arm.

The teacher's eyebrows rose immediately, and she sucked in air through her teeth. She forced a smile.

"I think we're going to have to change your schedule," she commented, clicking her tongue.

* * *

_(A/N): __**OH MY GOD. I HAVE NOT WRITTEN FOR THIS IN SUCH A LONG TIME.**_

_Sorry about that, guys! Gah. I'd trapped myself in a few corners, though, and it took me a long time to figure a way out of them (as in a month, or however long it's been). And now I'm free! Yay!_

_Anyway, Dylan's a kraken, Blaise is a dragon... What else do you want, people? We've got vampires, werewolves, dragons, sea monsters, and beldams._

_*oneofthesethingsisnotlikethe others*_

_*ohyeahbecauseonewasinventedb ymrgaiman*_

_*whythefuckamitalkinglikethis *_

_*okayillshutup*_


End file.
